As much as we geeks wish it were otherwise, the fact of the matter is that we are domesticated primates, social mammals with a natural preference for prioritizing information along social lines, after immediate survival/pain-response.
We can be trained, imperfectly, to care more about things like repeatability and logic, but the people who are trained best to think this way become, yes, geeks. The rest of humanity continues to rely upon sources of information based more upon social hierarchy than upon reason.
If we're actually intelligent, we'll stop wishing that reality was otherwise (even while fighting to change it), and start tailoring our communications for the world as it is, instead of as we wish it were.
It's notable here that in her ruling, the judge makes clear that the plaintiff could have gotten a lot more money by demanding the profits resulting from the ads with the pirated photos. The plaintiff mentioned this in his initial claim but did not follow through, thus abandoning the claim.
So let's scale back on the boasting about not using an attorney, ok?
BDSM is also a sign that something is not quite right in your head,
If you don't enjoy being tied up by your lover from time to time and being ravished, or vice versa, I submit that there's something not quite right in your head.
Kids love to watch the same damned things over and over and over. If you're going to download the Mouse's latest oeuvres, you're going to want to cache them locally for a long while so that the rug rats can keep watching them.
I swear, one of these days I'm going to start a Slashdot Stand-Up routine, made entirely of jokes posted to Slashdot's comment section. I'll bet you could easily gather enough material for an hour-long routine, not even counting the in-joke memes and esoteric tech jokes.
I, for one, welcome our new algorithmically comedic overlords.
Nothing has really changed from the days of Copernicus and Kepler. They were persecuted and ridiculed for their then radical ideas, based on real observations, not fanciful math. Today, scientists who promulgate foundation rocking new concepts and promising new avenues of real research, are denied, by the scientific establishment, publication and funding. Science today is less and less interested in discovering truth, because there is always the danger that such truth will demolish cherished dogma.
"They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Columbus, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
Don't hold your breath. The First Amendment issues are much stickier around non-commercial speech, especially political speech.
No, I don't happen to believe that they apply to people using my own equipment and my own paid service to harass me either, but those arguments can and will be made.
I had internet service in Austin from both AT&T DSL and Time Warner cable up until about ten minutes ago. I'd been intending to set them up through a multihomed router for fail-over redundancy, but for whatever reason the Time Warner feed was never routing properly. I'd been intending to cancel it for months, since AT&T has been rock solid here (at my previous address in Florida, I had to use redundant feeds quite frequently).
Well, on this ongoing news I called them and canceled the service - when they asked me why, I told them it was because Time Warner was moving over to metering service. When they said, "well, you know that won't be coming to Austin for a long time," I told them that I didn't care and that I didn't want to do business with them for Internet anymore.
The objection that I have to this program was that it was an experiment, a costly one, with no guarantees of future success.
You know, I'm a big fan of nuclear power and not so much of coal. Still.
If there were guarantees of future success, it wouldn't be much of an experiment. It's worth our pouring a lot of money (but still microscopic compared to our overall energy expenditures) into ambitious experiments just so that we learn the full range of options and their implications - if we learned, we example, from this experiment that "low Co2 coal" is much more dangerous and expensive (for whatever reason) than the coal industry would like us to believe, wouldn't that be worth a mere couple billion dollars?
It seems to me that people's tastes in music are formed by the music they hear, and greater exposure to a genre of music will alter their tastes and preferences. So in effect there's little difference between the music one likes and the music one is exposed to. Good music is music you've already heard lots of times.
While there's an element of truth to this, it's also way overstating the issue. "Like a Virgin" will be awful, simplistic tripe no matter how times I hear it, while I often really enjoy new jazz quartet pieces. Not many people are playing "Macarena" these days, thank the FSM.
I think instead that there's a window of opportunity that opens as one hears a piece of music many times, and that you really can't appreciate a piece in fullness until you've heard it many times. Sometimes that means that you learn to love its subtleties and its rhythms (or just a few well chosen chrodss - I'm not one to diss the Kinks), sometimes you just come to realize that there's no there there. But if someone's just looking for a something to tap their toes to, they probably will prefer more familiar pieces that offer the same beat.
Slashdot Mirror
As much as we geeks wish it were otherwise, the fact of the matter is that we are domesticated primates, social mammals with a natural preference for prioritizing information along social lines, after immediate survival/pain-response.
We can be trained, imperfectly, to care more about things like repeatability and logic, but the people who are trained best to think this way become, yes, geeks. The rest of humanity continues to rely upon sources of information based more upon social hierarchy than upon reason.
If we're actually intelligent, we'll stop wishing that reality was otherwise (even while fighting to change it), and start tailoring our communications for the world as it is, instead of as we wish it were.
I know a number of other people whose lives were saved by Prozac and Wellbutrin.
Since when was Slashdot in the business of spreading Scientologist propaganda?
It's notable here that in her ruling, the judge makes clear that the plaintiff could have gotten a lot more money by demanding the profits resulting from the ads with the pirated photos. The plaintiff mentioned this in his initial claim but did not follow through, thus abandoning the claim.
So let's scale back on the boasting about not using an attorney, ok?
This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!
It's hard to over state my satisfaction.
Is that that text editor that uses the rogue keys?
You obviously don't know many parents.
Kids love to watch the same damned things over and over and over. If you're going to download the Mouse's latest oeuvres, you're going to want to cache them locally for a long while so that the rug rats can keep watching them.
Nice try, but it's turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.
Nice idea, but I'd worry about the first screaming baby.
Hurm, maybe it's a good idea after all...
Huh. Can Chuck Norris kick somebody's ass so hard that they can't make it to Paradise?
It's more complicated than that. Blu-Ray players have their own JVMs, so every Blu-Ray disc could have a distinct type of DRM.
The only way to generally break DRM on Blu-Ray will be to emulate the Blu-Ray JVM and simulate playing the disc.
Just start adding Church of Scientology documents to your profile.
"Let's you and them fight."
The point is that sophisticated enough tools can help you find the websites that do have something useful to say.
The amount of garbage out there only makes these tools more necessary.
You forgot to add, "Vote for Ron Paul"
Don't hold your breath. The First Amendment issues are much stickier around non-commercial speech, especially political speech.
No, I don't happen to believe that they apply to people using my own equipment and my own paid service to harass me either, but those arguments can and will be made.
I don't blame you - I've never been more skeptical of the existence of Minnesota than when I was there, myself.
I had internet service in Austin from both AT&T DSL and Time Warner cable up until about ten minutes ago. I'd been intending to set them up through a multihomed router for fail-over redundancy, but for whatever reason the Time Warner feed was never routing properly. I'd been intending to cancel it for months, since AT&T has been rock solid here (at my previous address in Florida, I had to use redundant feeds quite frequently).
Well, on this ongoing news I called them and canceled the service - when they asked me why, I told them it was because Time Warner was moving over to metering service. When they said, "well, you know that won't be coming to Austin for a long time," I told them that I didn't care and that I didn't want to do business with them for Internet anymore.
Here's hoping more people cancel them.
If there were guarantees of future success, it wouldn't be much of an experiment. It's worth our pouring a lot of money (but still microscopic compared to our overall energy expenditures) into ambitious experiments just so that we learn the full range of options and their implications - if we learned, we example, from this experiment that "low Co2 coal" is much more dangerous and expensive (for whatever reason) than the coal industry would like us to believe, wouldn't that be worth a mere couple billion dollars?
That's Dish's attorneys' position. I'm sure TiVo's attorneys feel otherwise.
Expect more court dates.
And I thought it was bad enough when they were controlling our weather by making hurricanes in the US when they flap in Beijing!
I think instead that there's a window of opportunity that opens as one hears a piece of music many times, and that you really can't appreciate a piece in fullness until you've heard it many times. Sometimes that means that you learn to love its subtleties and its rhythms (or just a few well chosen chrodss - I'm not one to diss the Kinks), sometimes you just come to realize that there's no there there. But if someone's just looking for a something to tap their toes to, they probably will prefer more familiar pieces that offer the same beat.